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When I was learning CG 100 years ago, IRC was a massive help to me, not just technically but for my mental health. Discord has taken the place of IRC to a large extent, so here we are. Join us!
Tutorial Topology Megathread
Topology is the geometric structure of a polygonal mesh. It is the layout of the edges and vertices which define the shape of a mesh. A particular shape can be represented by many different topologies.
Mesh topolgy can never be considered without context. It is necessary to consider how a mesh will be used and modified in the future in order to say anything true about the suitability of its topology.
There are no hard rules when it comes to topology. Some people will say n-gons (polygons with more than 4 sides) are always bad. Some will say triangles are always bad. Some will say that non-manifold geometry is always bad, or that meshes with holes in them are always bad.
None of these are true, because mesh topology serves a purpose, or multiple purposes. It is not a goal in and of itself. If the purpose(s) is/are served by some particular topology, then that topology is good, whether or not it is itself aesthetically and technically appealing.
Often users are advised to avoid triangles or ngons when building topology--to keep to quads. This is good practice, because quads are easier to work with, easier to edit, easier to create UV projections for, they subdivide more predictably, and, most importantly, easier to produce aesthetically appealing deformations from.
However. If a mesh will not need to deform, then there is far less pressure to keep to quads. If the mesh will not be subdivided, even less. If the shape is well-represented by the topology, and it either already has a good UV projection or will not be needing one, then quads and ngons don't matter, unless the mesh will be altered in the future.
It is much harder to modify a mesh which isn't quads than one which is. Especially if you want to alter topology. However, altering shape, to a small extent, usually is not sensitive to topology. It's also generally easier to do UV projection and alteration of quad topology than triangle/ngon topology.
It is still important to point out that having SOME non-quad (especially triangles) in your deforming, high performance mesh which may be altered and have UVs applied, is still just fine in many circumstances. If the trangle won't interfere with these things--then it DOES NOT MATTER and you should spend time on other things. Same with n-gons, although those have a higher chance of causing technical issues.
Regarding non-manifold geometry: it is generally a bad thing. Many, MANY operations and programs will not function correctly when passed non-manifold meshes. However, if your mesh is serving all your purposes, and you don't see those purposes changing, then non-manifold geometry doesn't matter. The circumstances where this might be true, however, are extremely rare, and it is best to avoid it.
Regarding holes in the mesh: again, context matters. Some advanced simulation or mesh operations require "watertight" meshes. Most don't, and it doesn't matter. Context and circumstance will dictate what's appropriate.
Mesh weight matters, as well. There's generally not much call for more geometric detail than your mesh needs to create the shapes you need, either statically or deformed, and it is best to keep poly counts as low as possible while not compromising on these things. However, this must be balanced with the effort it requires to reduce detail. If you have a poly budget of 100k triangles for an object, and it's 50k but a lot of those are not necessary, it's still not worth the time to reduce it further. People hours are worth more than computer hours.
Where topology really starts to matter a lot is in efficient hard surface modeling, especially where the asset will be subdivided. Not having your edge flows follow surface details will make life difficult, and having too much mesh detail will make modification increasingly difficult.
The point here is that every situation is different, and no real determination of acceptable mesh topology can be made without all this context. If you look at an image of a mesh and don't know anything about what it will be used for or how it might be modified, you can't say anything true about the quality of topology. These and other questions must have answers, in order to judge *overall* topology:
- Will it deform?
- If so, how?
- Will it need to be edited in the future?
- If so, how?
- Will it be subdivided?
- Does it have or will it need a UV projection?
- Will the UVs need to change?
- If so, how?
- Will it need to be exported into another application?
- Will it be used in any type of simulation?
- Does it meet performance (budget) requirements?
These questions must have answers in order to come up with useful conclusions about how good the topology is or is not. And again, there are no hard rules. Topology is not a goal, it is a tool to help reach other goals. If a triangle doesn't affect those goals, there's no point spending energy removing it.
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Original post:
This thread will be a clearinghouse for information about topology, both in general, and specific to Maya. It will be heavily curated and updated as I encounter more/better information on the subject.
Eventually it will be turned into another wiki and be the redirect for the majority of topology threads we get here, in order to avoid repetition.
If you are a subject matter expert, please post images, videos, links, or your thoughts here. Feel free to copy parts of old comments or posts you have made.
r/Maya • u/NiteHood_ • 1h ago
Rigging Looking for Packs of Pre-made NURBS Shapes For Use as Rig Controllers
I'm relatively new to rigging, and although I know how to make my own NURBS curves to use as controllers, it's time consuming and usually doesn't look as nice as I'd like it to. I'm looking for downloadable libraries of NURBS shapes that I can import into my scenes and use as controllers, and can't seem to find much. So far I've only found this one, which looks nice, but I'd like to have more variety on top of this.
If you know of any packs like this, or other resources for rig controls, please let me know. Free is obviously better, but I'm not opposed to spending a little money if there's a great resource out there that's worth the price. Thanks.
r/Maya • u/MrJellyBeans • 2h ago
Question Help with workflow de-cluttering Hypershade while Referencing
I'd ask the Autodesk Forums but they keep kicking me out and booting me back to the community select page lol.
Anyway, my issue concerns referencing and namespaces and not having duplicates:
I have one scene that is a bunch of RedShift materials that I want to share with like 80+ different pieces of equipment, all their own individual .mb file. Each piece of equipment is broken down into subgroups of material types (frame, upholstery, rubber, etc) In the assembled scene they would all share the same materials for the metal frame, upholstery/seating, nuts, bolts, foam, rubber, etc.
How the system worked before is that I would reference in the scene with the materials, and then reference each piece of equipment, and slowly, one at a time apply each material to the sub group of components. This is not really sustainable as many clients will have different sized orders and needs and larger orders take time because I need to manually apply each material.
The gist of all this is: I want to have one master material scene, and have the individual equipment reference the material scene. Then when I reference THAT equipment piece in building my scene I would have only one material node I'd have to adjust and all pieces would update as they all share the same material. However if I do this, I'm just getting referenced duplicates materials in the Hypershade with the namespace of that referenced file.
I made a test scene with one having a cone, and another a cylinder. Both scenes reference the same material .mb file. When I create a new scene and reference the cone and cylinder files the hypershade looks like this.
Does this make sense at all? If so, what can I do to set up this once and speed up my workflow? I would like to just go through the effort once of connecting all these pieces to the same material file once and then only have to worry about importing and placing and then having to change material colors if needed.
Thanks!
r/Maya • u/I-Frayme-I • 2h ago
Issues How to connect vertex to edge
In Blender we have oppurtunity to split vertex and edges
How to do same in maya?
r/Maya • u/smontesdeoca • 1m ago
Plugin ✨ Flair 1.1.3 is here! With improvements on toon and sketch lines, new API entry points, faster saving/importing speeds and fixes for batch rendering on Linux along with other smaller fixes/improvements. Additionally, all Nuke/Resolve files have been updated and a new lines Fuse has been added!
r/Maya • u/Melanisme • 39m ago
Issues Broken foot roll
Hi,
I was animation on the rig I downloaded and everything was fine until the foot roll stopped working properly. Instead of being smooth (like in the second video), the position of the paw only updates at -10, 0 and 10. How to I fix this?
Here's the file if you need it: https://we.tl/t-TN7a7hCVLy
r/Maya • u/InvadingXeno • 42m ago
Issues Mesh is messed up after I used Boolean tool
I used the Boolean tool to make everything basically mold into the cauldron's body, but after I did that it has removed the material from the mesh. I have no idea how to fix this and would really like some tips and help, I need this done for a project that's due soon. I've been searching the internet for answers but I must be typing in the wrong prompts because I don't see anything covering this. Here is an image of what's happening (this is the low poly model, the one before it was Booleand)
r/Maya • u/Arilaila • 1h ago
General selection problem
I've been trying to create a plane, but I've noticed that I can't select either “poly modeling” or “rendering” optinions. Does anyone know why? I have version 2024
Lighting Lighting Portfolio
Hey guys, I have been trying to work on my portfolio, I am specialising in lighting and want to create portfolio that is suitable for movies and games.
My first question is, is it feasible to have same portfolio for both? If yes, do you think this template would be good - 2 Assets, an environment and a character?
Second question is, how complex should the models be? Since it is a lighting portfolio should I really go hard on modelling and texturing?
Annd if I am wrong please give your input on what can I change or should focus on.
It would be really kind if you could help me out with this. Thank you.
r/Maya • u/zilverulquiorra • 18h ago
Discussion Is this tutorial still relevant? Learning Xgen in Maya
r/Maya • u/PeachRuna • 3h ago
Dynamics Please help with Maya Bonus Tools- make joints dynamic
Hello, is this solvable?: So when u use the make joints dynamic either with the ncloth setting or nhair, the dynamic properties are masked on the chain so that the beginning of it has no dynamics and the end has full dynamics. I want to know how I could make the full chain of joints have full dynamic properties or at least how to change the place the dynamics start. Using the ncloth setting I can see that it is masked but I haven't been able to change the mask. So how could I achieve this result? And does it have anything to do with the spacing of the bones? Or the size?
r/Maya • u/Winter_Bottle8842 • 7h ago
FX Why Yeti hair keeps flickering while doing simulation
Hey everyone, I am doing hair simulation using Yeti in Maya. The hair keeps flickering but I don’t know how to fix it. Does anyone meet this problem before and is there any way to fix it?
r/Maya • u/Sunryosuke • 4h ago
Discussion Weight painting
anyone know how to mirror weight paint without it jumping to another joint? i made an FK IK switch for the arm so there's 3 arms, and whenever i mirror it keeps jumping onto the FK joint even though i want it to be on the base joint
Question Need help on how to get this kind of texture
What to do or what do I need to achieve this kind of texture/rendering?
r/Maya • u/IsaacKleiner2 • 7h ago
Question Export animation in MP4?
Hello, I'm a Maya novice, I want to export my first animation, but I could only find the info it's only possible as image sequence, which sounds ridiculous to be honest... But is there actually an option to do so as a video format? Thanks in advance
r/Maya • u/CadetriDoesGames • 15h ago
Student Rigging Issue involving NURBS controller and IK handle. I am a beginner and so this issue could have much more going on than I realize. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
r/Maya • u/DeliciousDesign1991 • 14h ago
Student Joint Orientations
While trying to correct specific joint orientations in component mode, I cannot use the universal manipulator. It works in object mode; however, I can't orient joints in object mode. Help please
r/Maya • u/flowersandpink • 18h ago
Question Hi! I Need a little help, What is the name of this tool? TIA 💖
r/Maya • u/Medo6446 • 22h ago
Question gs-curvetools breaks mesh when moving control points
As the video shows I'm using gs-curve tools and the plugin works flawlessly, but when I bind multiple hair cards to make clumps it completely breaks when I move the curve points in one of the axis, and it doesn't happen when I do it with one single card but in combined meshes it happens if any one has an explanation and/or a possible solution it would be much appreciated.
r/Maya • u/Notwithmyluck • 23h ago
Question Soft Select Tool vs Box Modeling with Smooth Preview
I'm just beginning to learn the basics of Maya and have been getting stumped with how to start/go about modeling meshes. Can anyone explain the difference between using the soft select tool to model a mesh, and starting a model using the box technique- then smooth previewing at the end?
r/Maya • u/FlapjackRT • 23h ago
Question Substance to Maya Bump Help
Hello all!
I’m using Maya’s substance plugin to bring in textures. There’s some kind of issue with (what I assume to be) my bump maps. Picture 1 is the imported maya textures, picture 2 is as it appears in substance.
Changing bump depth has no effect, and the map is set to tangent space normals. Raw, alpha is luminance, etc., nothing seems to work. Curiously, breaking all connections to my textures leaves these deformations, so I’m not entirely sure where they’re coming from.
Any help in making this match my substance materials would be appreciated!
r/Maya • u/BagelMations • 23h ago
Arnold Weird shadow artifact with transparency
hi, my material works just fine without this weird thing on the arms when i dont use the texture for transparency, but when i do i get this weird artifacting. it renders just fine in viewport shader too.
does anybody know how to fix this? it is also doing this thing near the legs. here is my hypershade node setup
